If I Were To Say "Nexus"

You Might Jib A Little

"That posing preening popinjay Conrad is at it again," you might say, which would immediately earn you a sudden dose of Remote Nuclear Detonation as a shapeshifting alien infiltrator, because Conrad is known to all as an utter scruffbag devoid of fashion sense or style.

     True, the word does derive from Latin, "Nectere" <spit hack> meaning "To bind", and the modern sense of it implies a linkage or series of bonds or interfaces.  You might also be thinking of the comic character.  Art!

     I can't give you more than a potted synopsis <gah! another Greek word!> about "Nexus" or we'd be here all day.  The very reluctant superhero you see above is Horatio Hellpop, who is forced by his alien mentor, the Merk, to go forth and execute various mass murderers in the galaxy of 4000 AD.  Or the Merk will send him completely insane.  A bit of pressure to perform, there.  "Nexus" is a mixture of space- and soap-opera, with excellent artwork and a well-developed back story.  Conrad has about 50 of the issues and will now have to go back and read them.  Art!

     Why BÖC?  For one thing, "Astronomy" doesn't get any airplay, probably because it's about 6 minutes long and thus not fit for radio station airplay.  It makes BOOJUM! by virtue of it's lyrics, which I can replicate here -

It's the nexus of the crisis

And the origin of storms

     I have 0% idea what the song means, Eric Bloom warbles on about 'silver scrapes' and 'acid and oil' and 'lesser birds' and one suspects there may have been a bit of Lucy in the S

     ANYWAY let us use this convenient thermite cannon to awaken Art and provide a bit of relevant photography.

     Here we have the Doctor doing a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes in Victorian London, with Leela wearing more clothes than she is comfortable with, a series of ghastly murders, a war criminal from the future and his sinister Chinese minion.

     The war criminal is one Magnus Greel, a fugitive from the forty-first century who has transported himself back in time to the late nineteenth century, thus avoiding prosecution and execution, but also accumulating an enormous fine for library books not returned.  Art!

When a runny nose is the least of your problems

     Greel is quite cocky and boastful at getting his hands on his 'time-cabinet' again after misplacing it for twenty years or so, and gloats in front of the Doctor, which is never a good idea as our favourite Gallifreyan loves to take prigs down by several pegs.

WENG: Yes! I made this possible. I found the resources, the scientists
DOCTOR: The zigma experiments came to nothing. They were a failure. Nothing came of them.
WENG: No! No, they were a success! Why, I used them to escape from my enemies. The first man to travel through time.
DOCTOR: Hmm. Look what it did to you.

     'Zigma' has been alternatively spelled 'Zygma' in a few sources I've read, but since this is the script, we're sticking with it.  Art!

     Here's the relevant script portion that I could have just dumped at the beginning of this Intro.  'Could' meant an Intro of 50 words, so that wasn't going to fly.  

DOCTOR: Unsuccessful time travel, Professor. Findicker's discovery of the double nexus particle sent human science up a technological cul-de-sac.

     Call me delirious, demented or daft, but I distinctly recall the guilty party being called "Wexler" not Findicker <sigh> another compulsory viewing needed.

     Now, let us abruptly change track (pun intended) and plunder another pop culture reference, namely "Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade", and if only it had been the last <dark mutterings ensue>.  Art!

     

     The fictional tank from said film, here because I felt like it.  It's a fictional adaptation of a British Mark V, with a lengthened hull, which was done with some later models to help cross wider trenches, and a turret on top which is quite anachronistic.  You ought to be well up on that, mind, thanks to our deep dive with the Doctor.

     My point here is that the British design, with sponsons mounted on either side of the hull, was indeed a technological cul-de-sac, and they went out of fashion a century ago.  The shape of the future was - Art!

     - the far more nimble French Ft-17.  The innovation here was a fully-rotating turret sitting atop the hull.  You didn't need to unship guns and remove sponsons before being able to transport this puppy, and a single gunner in the turret replaced at least four men serving the Mark V's guns.  Nor were the crew poisoned and deafened by sitting on top of the engine.  I wonder, I wonder - those tracks - could you see them as a set of linkages and thus a nexus?

Conrad Is ANGRIER!

For one thing, this week I'm on the early shift, which necessitates getting up at 06:55 in order to hustle and get things done in time for log-on at 07:45, thus needing to be a-bed well before midnight.

     Then there are the Codewords, whose compilers continue to mock me.  I can see you feel my pain.

GRAPPERS: You what?  Never heard of them, nor in the singular.  Not only that, this is such an obscure word it doesn't feature in my "Collins Concise Dictionary".  I had to go to teh Interwebz to discover - 

A metal ring or leather strap on the base of a lance behind the grip, designed to stop the lance from moving backward by catching on the lance rest or on the lancer's chest and arm when the lance was tucked into the armpit. 

    Art!

Mark Rylance.  Close enough.

COL: NO! This is not a mis-spelling of COAL, you bafunes.  Conrad admits he is rather more up on mountaineering terms than you are of late, thanks to reading about the First Unpleasantness being fought in heights such as the Dolomites.  You may have seen a col during Bruno's most recent exploits, as it is the lowest point on a ridgeline between two mountain ranges.  Art!

Close enough

AWL:  NO! Not South Canadian slang for 'everything'.  It's a sharp pointy hand-tool used to make holes in fabric and suchlike WHAT ARE WE AWL MILLINERS AND HABERDASHERS NOW?  Art!

The word 'Bah!' is superfluous here

Following On A Theme -

Though you need to wilfully mispronounce this chap's name, by pronouncing it the way it's spelled instead of said properly.  Art!

     This moody-looking cove is in fact Frederick Chopin, the Polish composer, which seems to follow with a wooden theme, as once you've chopped up the kindling you might want to keep any found artistic pieces and given them a coating to prevent rot and ruin.

     That's us here on the blog, forever chopin and changing.  Art!

     Yes, he's the composer of the still immensely popular Warsaw Concerto, again with the wooden theme.  Egad!

Going Back With More Cul-de-sac

I couldn't resist putting this photograph up as it arrived so serendipitously after our Intro, proving that the Coincidence Hydra still hasn't gotten a set of sapphire incisors, ha ha!  Art?

     How many washing cycles had the poor creature been put through*?

Finally -

Winter is waiting in the wings, I can tell.  Art!

     Because of this item, to wit: a set of headphones.  When donned first thing in the morning, or after a break, they are appreciably cold on the ears, in a way they have not been for six months.  Next up: frost on the inside of the windows -

     

*  And what does it taste like?